Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
I tend to agree, couplers are fairly expensive to start with & perhaps sometimes the coupled bike might not be the best for the trip. Box makes it easier to tote accessories like fenders & aero bar. OTOH with box it's likely one would need at least 2 taxi rides on a tour which lessens the savings of no airline fee for boxed bike. I would be more of a box fan if boxes were more commonly available at airports. Would be fun & cheap to just ride to the airport. Heh, in Frankfurt IIRC I saw personnel (pilots?) actually riding staff bikes or trikes inside the airport.
I always thought it was a hoot to ride out of the airport and start a tour. It would be the same to end a tour that way. Packing a bike at the airport would be more hassle than unpacking one though. At least it would unless the boxes were like the amtrak ones and you weren't worried about what the TSA and baggage guys would do to the bike if it wasn't carefully packed to be well protected.
I always thought of couplers as a great thing for folks who took bikes along on business trips or vacations more so than for bike tourists, but that is probably because I tend to think of tours as long point to point trips. Since I have never returned from the same airport I flew out to it kind of skews my thinking, but couplers never even came close to making sense for me.
Regarding your comments about boxes and the need for taxi rides, I somewhat agree, but have never actually used a taxi on a tour. I have not completely come to terms with how the lack of a bike baggage fee will affect what I do, but I will say that in all of my touring I have managed to have never used a taxi or uber to get anywhere. I have walked, used light rail, used metro and regional buses, and even hitch hiked on rare occasion.
Flying to my tour the new lack of fees won't change anything. For some it might mean a taxi, but I always avoided that. When I lived in Maryland I either had my wife drop me off at the airport or took the light rail to the airport leaving my car at the light rail not far from home if I didn't have a ride. Since I moved to Tallahassee I am a short 6 mile drive to the airport and will get my wife to drive me, failing that I'd arrange a ride with someone else. Worst case an uber, but I'd be unlikely to have to resort to that with enough friends and family willing to make the 7 mile drop off. Long term parking is expensive, but for a one week or ten day trip it would still be my preference over an uber or taxi. Depending on trip length and location one or the other might be cheaper.
Flying home, I have most often just dropped my bike at a bike shop for them to pack up and ship home for me. I have always managed to find a shop that I could walk, or catch a bus, or catch an airport shuttle to get to my flight. The packing and shipping was typically around $100 total. With the new policies I will be more inclined to fly home with my bike, but that may still be more trouble than I choose to go to in some cases. The longer I have been on the road the less I feel like having to deal with packing and dealing a packed bike myself. So convenience has trumped cost savings. I guess the options for flying home with the bike are (can you add others?):
- Call ahead to various baggage desks at the airport to see if any have boxes.
- Find a box at a local bike shop, flatten and roll it up to schlep it on the bike or in a bus with the bike on the bus's bike rack.
- Ship my soft case to somewhere (warm showers host, bike shop, or usps general delivery) in the town I am flying out of. The soft case only weighs a couple pounds and rolls up pretty small. I actually carried it along on one tour when I was too lazy to ship it home.
- Box the bike somewhere else and take it to the airport via a taxi, light rail, or other ground transit. This could be done with the soft case as well.